They looked at each other and, seemingly on cue, they both started giggling, laughing over nothing but new-found joy. It was as if they were two children who had discovered the hidden wonder and magic in the everyday world, like suddenly finding the rainbow spun off a crystal in sunlight.
Kris rolled over and lay next to him on her back, in contact, but not so close now that he could feel every heartbeat. She pulled the sheet down, carrying nothing for modesty and happy for a chance to cool off. She looked at him. “You know, I’ve been thinking … .”
“You can still think?” he asked, smiling. “Wow. That’s one up on me.”
Kris smiled back. “Stop it. I’ve been thinking, is the SECDEF a bad guy, someone who just wants the tech for himself, under his control? Or is he right, that we shouldn’t be trusted with something this big, that just because we thought it up and we built it, we aren’t necessarily the right choice to actually go?”
Nathan frowned and reached for her hand, entwining her fingers with his own and kissing them gently. He brought their arms down between their prone forms, still holding her hand lightly. “I don’t know. I don’t know him well enough to say. Just because someone didn’t get along with Gordon or Lydia, doesn’t automatically mean they’re evil or wrong.”
“But it’s not exactly a vote in his favor, either.”
“No, definitely not. Still, Gordon had his quirks, and not everybody appreciated them. I guess I’d have to hope that Carl Sykes did what he did out of a genuine sense of duty and concern for the nation. But I was there. I saw him and the way he operates. He may have nothing but altruistic motives, but how he gets his way is nothing short of criminal.”
Kris rose up on one elbow and turned toward him, making it difficult for him to concentrate suddenly. “Eyes up here, fearless leader.” He locked gazes with her and they both smiled. She nodded. “Tell me, is what Sykes doing the right thing or not? Is this mission delay and crew swap a better plan in the end, objectively? Or do you stand by the crew you picked out, the mission you’ve been planning?”
There was no hesitation on his part. “Getting out to the Deltans sooner rather than later is a better plan. Going out there with the people we trust and who we’ve worked with for so long is the right plan.” Nathan sighed. “But it’s out of our hands now. Why ask?
She leaned in to him, her lips brushing his earlobe, whispering, “Because if we only get one chance to be on that ship, we’d better make it count for something.”
11: “TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS”
March 6, 2045; USS Sword of Liberty (DA-1), aboard RLV Cauldron; Pacific Ocean, 400 nautical miles off the California coast
Miles and miles from any shipping lane, and barren of any unauthorized traffic, a very unusual naval exercise was underway. The carriers, cruisers, and destroyers of the US Pacific Fleet had scoured the waves for days, working in concert with satellites, aircraft, towed-array sonar surveillance ships, and submarines to ensure not one person was within weapons or sensory range of that particular spot in the ocean.
Having cleared the seas, the naval assets withdrew to a safe distance of 100 nautical miles and formed a defensive ring, allowing no man, boat, sub, plane, or leviathan to cross their barrier.
At the center of this ring, a very unusual ship sat alone, doing a very unusual thing.
The Reconfigurable Launch Vessel Cauldron had served as the womb of mankind’s first true spaceship. Within this strange, boxy vessel, the ship that would change the world had been assembled, in pieces, under the shadowy oversight of the US government at the innocuous Ingmar Rammstahl Shipbuilding Company in Santa Clara, California.
For the last two and a half years, the Cauldron had floated high in the water, with her vast, enclosed bay’s floor well above the ocean’s surface. But as the child of the future grew in her belly, her draft had slowly grown deeper. This mothership was more of floating drydock than a ship in her own right, but she could do things that no respectable drydock would ever be caught doing.
Now, alone at the center of the US Navy’s costly ring of solitude, the Cauldron appeared to be sinking. Over the span of hours, her bow lifted into the air while her stern dipped below the waves. Yet, she was not the victim of some random, tragic casualty. This was by design, through the careful pumping of ballast from one tank to another.
The angle of her hull increased steadily as her bow lifted up and up into the salt-laden sea air. Eventually, the drydock vessel became less of a ship and more of a tower—a tall, stable, enclosed gantry, floating isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And once the tower was finally erected, the bow blossomed open to reveal another, very different bow hidden inside.
For a brief moment, the wind and the sea gave pause, becoming calm and glassy, as if the sight of this strange ship/tower about to give birth to another ship were enough to shock nature itself into stillness. Then, silence and calm vanished as the Cauldron exploded in light and sound. Here, a new force of nature was unleashed upon the planet.
Blue-white energy stabbed down into the ocean, instantly boiling tons of seawater, producing superheated clouds of steam that pushed outward with the force and the speed of a nuclear detonation. The hollow bulkheads and frame of the Cauldron came apart like kindling and the Sword of Liberty was revealed for the first time, balanced upon her hexagonal stern, riding atop a lance of pure energy in the center of an expanding crater in the ocean.
The enormous, wedge-topped tower of the spacecraft fell slightly as her thrust built—but then the fall reversed itself and she began to rise, faster and faster, driven by a force equivalent to firecracker strings of nuke, after nuke, after nuke. The ship rocketed upwards at ever climbing Mach values, wind tearing at the thin aeroshells that protected her bow, antennas, and radiator panels.
The drive effect pulled away from the surface of the ocean and floods of seawater rushed in to fill the steamy, conical depression carved out in the ocean by the launch. Water geysered up hundreds of feet into the air, a final, petulant slap at the ship from Mother Earth, for having stricken her so deeply.
The attending ships, their crews gawking in awe at the spectacular launch, were unfortunately forced to turn away from the show by the simple need to survive. Atmospheric shockwaves from the continuous torch of energy were bad enough, throwing out hurricane-level gust fronts to set the ships heeling over, but the tidal wave was worse.
The transition of that much water to steam, and the accompanying inrushing flood and geyser were enough to set the whole ocean ringing like a bell. Solid bands of physical force expanded out from the launch point at the speed of sound through water, many times that of sound through air. The height of the ring fell steadily, but the energy remained, undissipated. The surface shockwave crossed the safety buffer of 100 kilometers in a few short moments and struck the warships with the abruptness of a hammer-fall.
Smaller ships were nearly tossed out of the water, lifted up high by the front of the wave and then left hanging as its sharp tail receded in a flash. Steel frames warped and cracked to such a degree that it would be years before all the ships would have a chance to go to drydock for repairs. Then the tidal wave vanished over the horizon to spread its influence around the globe, leaving the dazed sailors behind.